


Two little capsules, once a day-

by charimiel



Series: Fics from Quotes [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Nogitsune, Stiles POV, Stilinski Family Feels, based on a quote, i guess, ignores final scene of 3b (though it was a perfect scene), just because i couldn't get it to fit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 02:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1801822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charimiel/pseuds/charimiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>-keeps the big bad wolf away</p>
<p>He never stops taking his medicine, and he imagines it keeping away a wolf of grief, thinks of his father’s face when he catches a glimpse of a trace of her in the house and stays strong for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two little capsules, once a day-

**Author's Note:**

> The first in a series of unrelated stories based on quotes picked from books at random  
> Disregards final 3b scene with Kate

When Stiles first gets his medication, he’s eight years old, and he’s too old to throw a tantrum, or complain about the small capsules they hand him. He hates them, hates swallowing them, hates the way they feel as they go down his throat, hates how he feels strange and not himself after taking them. Most of all, he hates not knowing what they are, because the idea of swallowing something mysterious puts him on edge. After reading the label and warnings, he thinks he’d rather be ‘sick’.

So he doesn’t take them. He’s not stupid, he knows his dad checks the bottle to see that they’re going down, but he takes two out each day and hides them in his pillowcase. If no one even realises he isn’t taking them, there can’t be anything seriously wrong with him, and he clearly doesn’t need them.

Unfortunately, his dad is a deputy at the Sherriff’s station, and it’s his job to find people’s secrets and the things they hide. He’s watching cartoons; he insists he’s not too old for them yet no matter what Jackson says. His dad uses his full name, the horrific polish monstrosity that he never uses unless Stiles’s has done something seriously wrong, and when Stiles turns around his dad has a handful of capsules, that he knows must be the ones from inside his pillow, because his dad is looking at him with a look full of so much disappointment he flinches.

He doesn’t say anything, just looks down at the floor as his dad calmly explains to him all the reasons he needs to take the medicine. That’s the worst thing, because his dad’s not even angry. He’s just disappointed, and Stiles swallows back the tears that threaten to overflow.

“Sorry.” He mutters to the floor, and his dad sighs, and eventually leaves the room when Stiles refuses to look up.

He escapes upstairs before his dad can come back, shuts the door as some illusion of privacy, and curls up under the covers.

It’s maybe an hour before there’s a knock at his door, and a quiet “Stiles?” from the other side. It’s his mom’s voice, so he doesn’t say anything to stop her coming in, doesn’t tell her to leave him alone like he did to his dad earlier when he’d tried to talk to Stiles again.

She shuts the door behind her, and walks over to him. When she reaches him, she sits next to where he’s lying on the bed and strokes her hand over his hair in the way that he associates with comfort and home.

“Do you trust your father and me?” she asks him softly, and he frowns.

“Of course.” He replies, and she smiles at him and hauls him upright so he’s sitting next to her.

She pulls the little bottle out of her pocket, that contains the little capsules he hates so much.

“We just want the best for you honey.” She says, pulling him in for a quick firm hug. “I know you hate them, but they’re what you need.”

She presses two capsules into his hand, his dose, and puts the bottle down on the side.

“Two little capsules, once a day, keeps the big bad wolf away” she says, looking right at him with the eyes that are so similar to Stiles’s own. “Just like apples and the doctor.”

“But there isn’t a big bad wolf.”

“Not exactly sweetheart, I know. But it’ll help if you think about it keeping something real away.”

She presses a kiss to his forehead, and stands up, the scent of her perfume wrapping around him for a moment, comfort and safety. “Your father’s not angry, and he’s sorry he upset you. Come down when you’re ready.”

She leaves him there, with the medicine in his hand. He looks at it, and whispers to himself “Two little capsules, once a day, keeps the big bad wolf away”. He swallows it, and feels safer.

……….

It becomes a sort of ritual after that. He takes the capsules, never misses a day, imagines the medicine keeping him safe. Whispers the line about the big bad wolf every time he takes them.

His mom gets sick a couple of years after, and when his world crashes down, he keeps taking them, because every time he does he can hear his mom’s voice, healthy and happy. She’s in the hospital permanently, voice tired and ragged, pale and fragile.

He sits with her at the hospital, and the first and only time one of the nurses brings her medication in front of him he says it to her confidently, reassures her the same way she did two years ago. She smiles sadly, and ruffles his hair. He has to lean down to hear what she says, because her voice is so weak.

“Not this wolf, sweetheart.”

She dies only a couple of weeks later, slips out of the world in a way that’s too peaceful for the way it shatters his heart. Later, people tell him he aged years in the month she passed. He never quite works out the right way to reply.

His dad breaks apart in front of his eyes, and there’s nothing he can do besides hide the whisky on particularly bad nights, heat their meals up in the oven. They have a fridge full of casseroles and leftovers in the way that the survivors of tragedy always do, neighbours and friends looking to help but having no idea how.

He never stops taking his medicine, and he imagines it keeping away a wolf of grief, thinks of his father’s face when he catches a glimpse of a trace of her in the house and stays strong for him.

…………….

The Hale house burns down about six months later, when his dad’s returned to work, shoulders a little lighter. He’ll carry the grief with him forever in the way he keeps his wedding ring on his finger, but when Stiles looks at his father he no longer sees a man in danger of drowning.

His dad comes home smelling like smoke and sadness, and pulls Stiles into a hug before he can even ask what happened. When he sees the two teenagers behind his dad he doesn’t even need to ask, recognises the grief and loss on their faces all too well.

“I told Laura and Derek they could stay with us for a bit.” His dad says, and Stiles nods at them. The girl, Laura, looks close to tears but smiles a watery smile at him. The guy doesn’t even seem to notice anything that happens around him, stares into the distance with a look Stiles recognises from the week or so after his mom died, when his dad had barely spoken a word.

The two remaining Hales stay in their spare room for three days. Stiles brings them in food, and Laura thanks him. Derek never seems to notice anything, never comes back to himself. He hears sobbing from their room at night, and understands the inability to sleep.

When he takes them in their dinner on the third day, he takes a couple of sleeping pills he finds in their medicine cabinet. His dad keeps the key on top, out of reach of Stiles’s hands (though not for much longer, he’s growing taller every day), but Stiles figured out how to get it down years ago.

He hands them to Laura and when she stares at him confused, he smiles sadly.

“My mum used to get me to take my meds by telling me they’d keep the big bad wolf away. They’ll help you sleep.”

“Thank you.” She whispers, and Derek still stares into space, but there’s a moment where he thinks he sees the tiniest flicker of consciousness in his eyes.

They’re both asleep when he checks on them the next day before school, and when he comes back that afternoon, they’re gone. He doesn’t see Laura alive again, and it’s nearly six yeas before he sees Derek.

…………..

Derek gives no indication that he recognises Stiles when he comes back to Beacon Hills, but there are more important things to worry about, since his best friend is apparently a werewolf. He figures it out, researches everything, and takes more Adderall than he’s supposed to take, because something in him still reaches out to it as some kind of comfort.

When he’s certain, and all the evidence only points to werewolves, he laughs hysterically, because the big bad wolf is apparently real. And there’s no pills that’ll keep it away.

…………….

Derek becomes an unnervingly constant presence in his life. He’s a dick, and Stiles sort of hates him, wants to hate him, but every time he looks at him he sees the broken boy from six years ago. Sometimes, when he’s sure no one’s looking, Derek’s face fills with so much sadness Stiles isn’t sure how one person can hold in that much grief and survive.

He thinks of his mom, and how she’d always tried to help people. Saves Derek over and over, figures out the Hale fire and sets Peter on fire for Laura, for the lost girl who’d taken the sleeping pills from him with such gratitude all those years ago.

The capsules may keep the wolves away, though it could be argues that that’s just Stiles’s luck and Scott and Derek’s convenient rescues, but no one ever said anything about darkness, or nogitsunes.

After everything goes to hell, when all he can see behind his eyes are broken bodies, images straight from the horror movie that his life has become, he curls up under his covers just like he had all those years ago, when his dad had been so disappointed in him. If he closes his eyes and believes hard enough, he can pretend his mom’s just behind the door, that she’s about to come in, that she’ll fix everything, make him okay. She doesn’t come. But Derek does, pushes open the door in a way he never has before, choosing the window in the past.

Derek sits on the floor beside Stiles’s bed, and Stiles blinks back the tears that are threatening to spill over.

They sit in silence, just talking comfort from each other’s presence. Scott and his dad are worried about him. He can tell in the way they stare a little too long, lock gazes when they don’t think Stiles can see. He hasn’t spoken in a week, thinks if he opens his mouth everything will pour out at once, and he’ll just fall apart. But if anyone understands silence, and guilt, and loss, it’s Derek.

“I didn’t speak for three weeks after the fire.” Derek says into the silence, and Stiles slips his hand out of the covers and holds it out in invitation. Derek takes it, and squeezes. “Laura used to say it was okay to not want to talk.”

Stiles squeezes his hand back, and doesn’t speak yet. But he’ll get there.

……………

Stiles takes the bottle of capsules in his hand, and opens it. Pours two into the palm of his hand. Looks up as Derek walks through the doorway.

“I don’t want to keep the big bad wolf away.” Stiles says, the first words in nearly two weeks, his voice quiet and strained. Derek smiles, walks over to him, and presses a kiss to his forehead in a way that feels like coming home.

“Then don’t” he says, and Stiles smiles, a tiny fragile thing, and swallows the capsules before leaning in to press a small sweet kiss to Derek’s lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, thanks for reading I guess! I've started this project as a way of keeping up my daily writing target, because I've finished my 30k fic (I'm just dreading the editing process, there's so much to do!). i'm hoping to have that posted before season 4, but for now I'll probably have one of these 'based on a quote' things up every few days I hope.  
> The quote this was based on was “Two little capsules, once a day, keeps the big bad wolf away.” from The Declaration by Gemma Malley
> 
> [Come cry with me over Stilinski family feels on tumblr](http://charimiel.tumblr.com)


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